Age of Conan - Updated Review

First part of my review was during the newbie area. In most games, each race has its own starting area with its own quests and story. In AoC there is one area where every player goes and the story is pretty much exactly the same. There is one really interesting aspect of the newbie area that is different than anything else I have seen thus far. There is single player aspect that only occurs at night. Its instanced so no other players are involved and you find your destiny and who you were. This is a very interesting way of being able to exit the starting area, teach you the game and so forth. Every NPC you interact with is voice acted pretty well and the quests are decent. Granted, there are lots of fetch quests and you get sick of the questing areas fairly quickly. It would make more sense for the questing areas to be instanced like the single player quests since some of them are fairly small and its tough to complete the quests during prime play times. It does take some time and you will be around 20 at the end of the newbie area.

Once you exit the newbie area, you are taken to tne home city of your race and are kind of left to your own devices. There is a related quest for you to follow but you are basically left alone in a big city to do what ever you want to do. Its here where the game, which showed a lot of polish and was well done, it starts to fall apart. The NPCs loses a lot of the polish the starting area had, the voice acting is gone and replaced by grunts and noises. The run and fetch quests are still there and there does not seem to be any path for you to follow. This is different from every other game where you are guided by the hand through various areas. AoC does not follow this and I find it annoying.

There are still aspects to the game I have not seen, but its all PvP related from what I read. I honestly can't say that I am going to stick around playing the game much longer. PvP is fun and all but there is nothing stopping more powerful players from slaughtering the weaker ones. AoC is as violent and unforgiving as the novels were but you have a slew of fuckers to ruin for everyone. A lot of people will really enjoy this game, of that I have no doubt. If the game is as balanced between PvP and PvE as WoW, it should be fine.

Its just not for me. I will give it a little longer, still have two weeks before my 30 days runs out but after that, unless this game really kicks me in the face with awesome, I'm out. Which is a let down as I really enjoyed the starting area.